Blog, BLOG Busy, BLOG BUSY Episode 6
Have you ever noticed how there is no differentiation or weighting given to the Ten Commandments? There is no order of priority; no relative importance ascribed one versus another. They all seem to be considered equally serious. This means that Sabbath-keeping is...
Blog, BLOG Busy, BLOG BUSY Episode 6
Who would guess today that God puts such a high value on having fun? Given all the uptight and overworked Christians in the world, you’d think that God was a Grumpy Gus – a severe taskmaster whose greatest joy was to see us suffer under a heavy yoke of arbitrarily...
Blog, BLOG Busy, BLOG BUSY Episode 6
What I find curious about this list is that, in modern America, only eight or nine of the Ten Commandments are commonly considered true commandments. In practice, one or two are considered purely optional – mere suggestions, if you will. One that we consider a...
Blog, BLOG Busy, BLOG BUSY Episode 6
If you are like me and have a poor memory – especially when it comes to following commandments – you may take comfort in knowing that in the Torah God is said to have created a “cheat sheet” of sorts. God narrowed all the commandments down to just 10, from which the...
Blog, BLOG Busy, BLOG BUSY Episode 6
According to Jewish tradition, there are 613 commandments or mitzvoth in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). In the 12th Century, the famous rabbi Maimonides made a list of them, observing that they fall into two categories: positive commandments and...
Blog, BLOG Busy, BLOG BUSY Episode 5
Of course, embracing the seasonality of life does not necessarily always mean “going with the flow.” The unacknowledged danger of Ecclesiastes 3 is that it can lead to a certain defeatism if you’re not careful. Sometimes, God calls us specifically to move counter to...
Blog, BLOG Busy, BLOG BUSY Episode 5
Embracing the seasonality of life has other benefits besides helping us deal productively with the tough times. When you embrace life’s flow, you leverage the energy of the flow. You can use it to your advantage. If you grow tomatoes in season, you can easily reap...
Blog, BLOG Busy, BLOG BUSY Episode 5
The book of Ecclesiastes (along with the Sixties band The Byrds who quote from it in their song “Turn! Turn! Turn!”) reminds us that seasonality is a foundational component of life on planet Earth. “For everything there is a season.” If we eliminate a sense of...
Blog, BLOG Busy, BLOG BUSY Episode 5
You’d think that after living for 5 years in Nebraska, I’d be pretty in tune with the growing seasons. But honestly, if it weren’t for my weekly CSA box, I wouldn’t have a clue. CSA stands for “Community Supported Agriculture.” You pay a particular farmer a certain...
Blog, BLOG Busy, BLOG BUSY Episode 6
The conversation on this week’s episode about the purpose of business being to help life flourish stuck me as so much wishful thinking. The concept of the triple or quadruple bottom line that adds social concerns in addition to shareholder profit seems to have...